I am an absolute beginner at fly fishing and am wondering what are the basic flies to buy and use. I fish the Holston and was there the other day. The guy near me was slaying the trout on nymphs. That's all I could get out of him. All i had were dry flies so I only got one bite. Any help would be very helpful. I plan on stocking my flybox pretty soon, but just don't really have a clue!

Grizz, the forum has search capabilities so you can always checkout past threads for some great info. I did a search on "Tailwater Flies" and found this recent thread, that may answer lots of your questions:

Alright man, first of all zebra midge's get to know em love em, black, red, grewn, tan, and any other color you like, they may like em too. Bead Head Pheasant tails good stuff. I fished the holston today and killed em on a tan, black and brown wooley bugger. Not sure if you tie but the zebra midges are soo easy to tie up so that might be a good start, I would suggest size 18, 20 and 22 when the water is a low bigger bugs when it is runnin. Lot of it is trial and error on the stream to see what color they are hitting and then just freakin slay em! If you wanna know a bit more email me

I am an absolute beginner at fly fishing and am wondering what are the basic flies to buy and use. I fish the Holston and was there the other day. The guy near me was slaying the trout on nymphs. That's all I could get out of him. All i had were dry flies so I only got one bite. Any help would be very helpful. I plan on stocking my flybox pretty soon, but just don't really have a clue!

I would pick a couple of dries that work most or all of the year and use them as indicators (like a bobber) and drop a midge off of that. You should get a lot of strikes on the midge and a few on the dry. Also, learn how to do an across stream drift and mend. It's much more succesful than casting straight upstream. Here's a picture:

If you can, stop by LRO and get a few lessons in person, if they have a casting class. You just can learn some of this stuff from videos. Also, take an entomology class from them. It's important to learn about what the trout are feeding on, when and why.